Under the direction of Dr. Carla Sinopoli, doctoral dissertation student Uthara Suvrathan will study the organization of complexity in a sub-region in peninsular India and its changing relationships through time with subcontinent wide processes, especially imperial expansion, during the 1st through 14th centuries AD. Suvrathan's project will examine data collected through a systematic archaeological survey in the hinterland of Banavasi, a regional capital and Gudnapur, an adjacent, contemporaneous lower order center. Banavasi rose to prominence as the capital of the regional kingdom of the Kadamba dynasty (4th- 6th centuries AD) and continued to maintain its importance as an administrative center until the 14th/15th centuries. The polity centered on Banavasi however, did not retain its independence throughout this sequence although regional elite groups maintained a presence in the region. From the 7th to the 10th centuries the region came under the control of a series of imperial powers.
This project will record the type and distribution of archaeological sites in order to document the material patterning that will help to identify local and imperial socioeconomic groups, systems, and activities. This archaeological data will be integrated with historical and epigraphic sources to develop a complete picture of regional organization at Banavasi. Through the analysis of this data (artifacts, architecture, epigraphic records) it will be possible to evaluate two models of regional socio-political organization over time, one of which postulates a high degree of control by larger imperial systems and the other which argues for limited external contact and the relative independence of the region.
These models will be operationalized using multiple lines of archaeological evidence: material evidence for administrative/ political authority and militarism (including monumental and defense architecture and inscriptions); settlement organization and the spatial distribution of monuments on the landscape; ideology and religion and forms of production and exchange (as reflected in ceramic and iron technologies and trade in prestige items). Imperial control at the site and its hinterland will be visible archaeologically in a variety of ways, including evidence for administrative and military control; economic extraction; centralized ritual activity; the establishment of extra-regional networks and the spread of architectural and ceramic styles and religious traditions from external core areas. Evidence for local autonomy may include a tendency towards regional styles in architecture, ritual activities and material culture; evidence for economic extraction by regional elites.
This project will make a significant contribution to the anthropological study of regional socio-cultural entities in South Asia. The results will be published both in a report to be submitted to the Karnataka Department of Archaeology and Museums and in peer reviewed journals in India and the US. The collections made during the course of research will be catalogued/ organized and transferred to the government of India, making them available to future generations of scholars for comparative study. This project also encourages academic interaction with Indian students. The survey is structured such that it will provide an opportunity for interested students from Indian colleges to participate in anthropological archaeological research and learn new techniques and methods. Finally, this project will document the archaeological history in a region whose heritage is rapidly being destroyed due to expanding agricultural activities, new construction work and intensive logging activities in the hills surrounding the site.
NSF funding provided support for my doctoral dissertation fieldwork during the summer of 2011. My project involved a full-coverage archaeological survey in a 5×5 kilometer block around Banavasi, the fortified urban capital of a regional kingdom and a sample survey of a similar 5×5 kilometer block centered on the adjacent contemporaneous, lower order center of Gudnapura (Fig. 1). Banavasi (75° 5`E, 14° 33`N) is located in the southern Indian state of Karnataka and has a long occupational history from the late centuries BC to the present day, during which it was at times incorporated within larger imperial systems and at others the capital of an autonomous polity. My research studies regional forms of complexity in small polities such as at Banavasi that were located at the peripheries of large states and empires. I ask questions about regional economic and political development including the agency of local elite and non-elite groups in the development of regional complexity, as well as their responses to and interaction with larger states and empires. My survey and analysis was conducted over three summer field seasons from 2009-2011. During this period, the project area was systematically surveyed and all sites were located on basemaps using a handheld GPS device, mapped and described on standardized field forms (recording information on site size, geographic setting, modern land-use, historical function and date). Partial surface collections were made where surface artifacts (ceramics, tiles) were visible. A detailed Totalstation map of the primary center of Banavasi was also made. Subsequently, I incorporated the survey and map data into a GIS database with separate layers containing data on sites, architectural remains identified both through the survey and known from the published literature, the location of inscriptions, landforms, water sources, modern land use and other geographic data. All collected artifacts were described, illustrated and photographed. Since ceramics and roof tiles form the majority of the collected artifacts, I recorded a number of quantitative (rim diameter & thickness, rim height & angle, body thickness etc.) and qualitative (rim form, paste, inclusions, surface treatment, fabric etc.) variables that have proved useful in dating my collections and in creating a preliminary typology of changes in ceramic tile styles over time. Initial results from my survey and analysis have delineated a complex picture of regional organization at Banavasi and the GIS database has allowed me to map temporal changes in landscape use in the survey area. In the first phase, in the early centuries of the Christian era, the primary habitation area and major religious structures (Buddhist stupas) lay immediately outside the present day village of Banavasi. In the next period, from the 4th to the 6th century, the rise of an independent regional polity with its capital at Banavasi is reflected in the presence of monumental architecture (fortification) and inscriptions at Banavasi and the growth of the smaller center of Gudnapura, approx., 4 kilometers to the northwest. While this polity declined by the 7th century, Banavasi continued to remain a regional economic and administrative center and Gudnapura once again declined into obscurity. I was able to trace a sequence of imperial authorities who maintained a presence in the town, patronizing large Brahmanical religious establishments, adding to the fortifications around the town and leaving behind inscriptions. There is also some evidence that local elite groups maintained a presence in the region, occasionally contributing to monumental architecture at Banavasi and establishing at least one subsidiary center adjacent to it (the village of Thigani, see Fig. 1). My project makes a significant contribution to the anthropological study of the organization of regional and sub-regional complex polities in South Asia. It also contributes to eventual interregional comparisons of archaeological patterning in peninsular India of long term regional trajectories towards socio-political complexity. The permit for the project was obtained from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Karnataka Directorate of Archaeology and Museums (the government affiliated bodies that supervise archaeological activities in India. The results of my work will be in a report to be submitted to the Karnataka Department of Archaeology. The collections made during the course of research have been catalogued and will be transferred to the government of India on the completion of my dissertation, making them available to future generations of scholars for comparative study. My project also encouraged academic interaction both by the collaboration with a professor from the local college (Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka) and through academic interaction with Indian students. The survey was structured such that it provided an opportunity for interested students from Indian colleges to participate in anthropological archaeological research and learn new techniques and methods. Finally, this project documented the archaeological history in a region whose heritage is rapidly being destroyed due to expanding agricultural activities, new construction work and intensive logging activities in the hills surrounding the site.
